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Raising Our Voices to Stop Climate Change

By: Elisabeth MacNamara07/30/2014

Congress will recess in a few days, but the League of Women Voters remains hard at work. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding regional hearings across the country to take public comments on Clean Power Plan designed to reduce carbon emissions. One regional hearing site is Atlanta, and I had the opportunity to participate in a press event and a rally, in addition to providing comments on behalf of the League.

In my comments, I commended the EPA for taking the necessary steps to cut carbon pollution and fight climate change, while also urging them to work with state stakeholders to make the regulation stronger, in order to reduce carbon pollution levels 35 percent by 2030. Renewable energy and energy conservation can play a much greater role than the current proposal suggests.

Joining me in Atlanta were League members from Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama and South Carolina. In fact, not only was the League represented at every regional hearing, our members and supporters have already generated over 50,000 online comments in support of the EPA’s new rules for new and existing power plants! These regulations are necessary to fight climate change, improve public health and invest in a renewable energy based economy.

According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report, nearly half of us live in counties that receive an “F” rating on at least one air quality measure. Here in Georgia, in just four counties in the Metropolitan Atlanta area that translates into over 800,000 children. The League will continue to fight to put people before polluters and lower the impacts and threats that dirty air induced climate change brings to our communities across the country.

Special interests have been lining up to tell the EPA why the new rules are too costly to implement, but as consumers, parents, grandparents and informed voters, the League serves as a powerful counter balance supporting the health and economic well being of our communities now and in the future.